Cheating the Spirits
by Lee Savage
Summary: AU. The possible repercussions of Tarrlok raising a child with the Avatar. The narrative is nonlinear.
1. Tempting Fate

When he was a young man, he was told that women are often depressed after birthing a child. Too many changes to overcome. A new responsibility. They will mess up. They've made a mistake.

Tarrlok never expected that he would dwell on this lesson, since he wouldn't have a wife. That'd be far too tempting for fate, to marry during his so-called "second life" like his father did.

But then came Avatar Korra. Smirking, stubborn, pregnant. The last scenario prompted their marriage—somewhat. Though it wasn't his child she carried, Tarrlok always ruminated on the political benefits of being betrothed to the Avatar. And when he'd discovered her situation, it bemused him, but it was the perfect time for his proposition.

The rest of Republic City had no idea about her condition, and a marriage with him offered a cover-up. Even if she was a few months along, what was the worst lie the newspapers could propagate—that he knocked her up and they married in haste? By Water Tribe standards, she would've been a woman when the tryst happened.

On the wedding night, she expected him to make her consummate the marriage after the ceremony (which had been a long ordeal); though he suggested that they sleep in the same bed to prevent unkind rumors from spreading, he never touched her indecently that night. They slept with their backs to each other.

Tarrlok wondered traitorously who, just who was the father of her child. If they had stolen her heart. That was the stupid part of himself, the young, idealistic fool buried through extortion and the numbing drone of paperwork and days spent alone in his working chambers or wandering the halls of his expansive home. No doubt it was one of those probending boys, and they'd fumbled around carelessly.

But Korra, once she'd given birth, wasn't sad in the least. She'd ranted and cried in the later months of her pregnancy, almost crushed his hand while she was in labor. She told him things that now make her shake her head. About how she couldn't be a mother. Oddly enough, that terrified Tarrlok. If a sheltered, spirited girl can't properly tend to a child, can't love it, how can a cynical man with no happy memories craft a fitting childhood for someone else?

When he held the child for the first time, Tarrlok was overwhelmed with despair. This wasn't his child, and he'll never have one. It's for the best. Any child with his blood—no. It's best that Yakone's bloodline runs out.

He sits there and his eyes burn. Dry eyes, of course. He's too smug, too proud to cry. The wetness is from the irritation.

* * *

"You are so—oh, whoooo." Korra's nose wrinkles. "Looks like it's time to hand you over to our resident diaperbender."

She smiles, walking with her child in her arms. "Hey, husband. Tarrrrloook." She strolls down the spacious, plushly carpeted hallway.

Korra worried when she was pregnant that she and Tarrlok wouldn't be able to care for the child. Not care as in providing a home; of course that was no trouble. But they have duties, and her—their daughter needed care as in _love_. Alternating in the day hours is difficult, and the nights are hard when she can't sleep because she's too busy monitoring the rise and fall of an infant's chest.

Tarrlok tries, but at first it was as if he didn't want to get attached. Well, she guesses that he didn't feel a connection to a child he didn't father. She wondered if she made a mistake. But he worries, and that sates Korra. In his own dumb way, Tarrlok will do anything to keep the child safe.


	2. Heritage

Breakfast in their residence is quiet, though the unease has dulled somewhat. The infant coos and looks around in her high chair, preoccupied with whatever pretty flights of fancy adorn the minds of children.

Korra sips (not that she really sips, she slurps—at least according to her prissy husband) her tea, resisting the urge to choke. While she appreciates their shared tastes in food and culture (despite his grimace-laden assertions that her culture is somewhat lacking), her husband fails when it comes to making tea.

She considers joking about it, but she relents when Tarrlok tells her that he makes it to alleviate her stress. Korra suffers in silence, an unbeckoned grin accosting her features. They are speaking about their child's future, and he questions how being the Avatar factors into her offspring's ability to bend or not. She shrugs.

Holding her porcelain cup, tracing the rim idly, Korra says, "She might be a waterbender." Light spills through the elaborate, azure curtains. Tarrlok is nothing if not the pompous, self-assured, ideal interior designer. Korra never thought she'd find kitchen counters to be beautiful, but the marble has the most intricate patterns imbued within it. And the dining ware?

Korra guesses that a man who lives alone must have enough time on his hands to arrange such frivolous, particular details. The oil paintings of jagged ledges and tundras, the furs that she never dares to show Naga (not that she's allowed in the home—well, like Korra cares what Tarrlok prefers) are enough to make her homesick. Her parents attended the wedding, but she never confided in them about her pregnancy until a few months after the birth. Better late than never, right?

His glance begs for an elaboration. "Her . . ." Korra doesn't want to say "her real dad." That would just be cruel. "The guy I was with was a waterbender."

"You have impeccable tastes."

Korra frowns. "Shut up." Her expression grows less pleased when there's a certain glint in Tarrlok's eyes. That thing that means that he either knows something or is about to release a really bad joke.

"I suppose it's true," he says slyly, "that opposites attract."

"What?"

"I never thought you'd be attracted to a wolf-bat. Though for our daughter's sake, I hope she doesn't inherit his taste in hairstyles."

Korra's eyes widen in horror. He recoils in distaste as the remaining tea in his wife's mouth sprays into the air violently. "T-Tahno? No, _no, no, no_."

Tarrlok smirks, shrugging off his reflexive wincing toward his wife's consistently poor table manners. It's somewhat endearing. Resting his palms against the tablecloth, he says wryly, "No?" He smothers any frantic curiosity.

"No, no, _no_." Her brows furrow, and she shakes her head with this grim seriousness that he never ceases to find amusing. "Never. Ever."

Hm. He's glad that, if she turns out to be a waterbender, their daughter won't have Yakone's blood. Tarrlok can still train her without worrying about breaching _that _topic. Any waterbender can learn bloodbending, but none as easily as those with a predilection in their blood.

"He was . . . older," Korra tells him, the words reluctant. Tarrlok meets her eyes, but says nothing. "He was just this man I met at the park. We didn't get along at first. He told me he thought I was arrogant." She swallows thickly. "'Uncaring,' he said. But later—later he thought it was both sad and nice how I was accepting despite not knowing his past. I guess it's like how Mako kind of shoved me off when I first met him, except with this guy I didn't feel stupid.

"Weird. He was old and more experienced, and I lived in that compound my entire life. But I didn't feel like a child with him. He would listen to me, seriously listen. He never really smiled; when he did, it was kinda cold. But I liked it. I liked how he didn't try to open up uncomfortable subjects when I was nervous or sad." The child babbles, and Korra gives her daughter a tired smile, her eyes half-lidded. "He just listened . . ." Her voice trails off.

Tarrlok regards her uncertainly. She's young, and it's not like he expects Korra to be entirely satisfied with marriage. He'd be a fool to think that one man can sate someone so full of energy, especially since his own virility won't be much to fawn over in the next decade or so. Even if her impulsiveness tempers, she'll still be a young person with basic needs. Still with an entire life ahead of her. And he'll be inadequate as even a piddly form of entertainment.

So he isn't surprised that she's still smitten with this mysterious man. Part of him wants to say that a truly good man wouldn't leave her to fend for herself. However, he doesn't know the context of their relationship, and it's not his right to dictate what Korra should and shouldn't do. She's willful. He tries to get her to act with decorum, but he won't force the matter because he doesn't want her to fight him, especially when they're finally on amicable terms. When he has the family he never dreamed he'd be able to afford with his ruddied conscience. Furthermore, Tarrlok admires that aspect of Korra, her fire. He'd be bored to death if he didn't have her rampaging through the halls.

Even with the Equalists quieting over the years—well, that means that they must be more careful than ever. If Amon ever dares to hurt their child—_his _daughter—

"Does 'this guy' have a name?" Tarrlok keeps his voice even.

"I haven't seen him in forever." Korra looks at him, her shoulders drooping, and the smile on her face is almost fond. "It doesn't matter."


	3. Blood

It had been all too easy.

Her number is eleven. She was eleven when she asked her father about bloodbending, when Tarrlok lost his temper at her for the first time. She spent eleven months practicing on the rats, then on stray dogs and cats.

It took eleven tries for her to bloodbend her first person without killing them, the common muggers and extortionists. She masqueraded in daylight as a doleful, timid child of privilege. She wondered, wondered if there were ways for her bloodbending to alter a person, to damage them beyond recognition. No, not physically, but ways for them to forget their past, to erase their memories. Eleven experiments to perfect her technique. She learned how to heal only so she'd know the intricacies of the body—so she could destroy it.

She was eleven when her mother, often absent because of her wordly duties, told her the truth about her parentage. Something not even Tarrlok knew. He didn't know how Korra's eyes widened when Amon's mask fell, when the red paint washed off and she saw him. Oh, she saw him.

Their daughter is twenty-two now, and the city buzzes with progress, the seediest parts of the city rallying to appease her. She smirks. When the times comes, not even her mother will be able to stop her. After the nights of tears and shivering, eleven years of them, she's more than her real father, more than the Avatar.

She's always so cold. Can't get warm.

Receding from the world, she makes one final visit before setting her plan into motion. Normally, hardly anybody would be allowed to visit a terrorist leader in his isolated cell. But she is the daughter of the Avatar, and nobody can deny her, not even the spirits themselves.

* * *

Their names whispered on her lips, settling there like frost. When she's placed on trial, she smirks and their names flutter away like dainty snowflakes in the wind. Frenzied like a lost seal pup in a storm. They have people who comb the spider-rats' nests from her hair.

She claims self defense. If she hadn't killed her mother, her mother would've severely hurt her.

At the trial, Tarrlok looks into his daughter's (his niece's?) gelid eyes and bows his head. He should've known. He should've known. She was a sick child, and he begged the spirits that she would survive.

They answered accordingly.

They are idiots. The crowd, the Council. He's long retired from his duty, and he knows what his daughter plans to do. Did they learn nothing from Yakone? They had her chi blocked before the trial, but they don't know his family, don't know the power. Don't know who her paternal grandfather is.

But he'll try to stop her. Do what he has to do to end this sad story.

Moving his hands off of the arms of his chair, Tarrlok watches as his daughter tenses. Her eyes are these slimy things, glossy like the shell of two beetles, two fat flea-ticks. She knows just where to look, her gray eyes boring into her father's tense expression. The muscles in his throat tighten.

He's nothing, nothing to her. A weakling.

Gasps sound as he and the defendant collapse and the court's clock chimes. An hour before noon.

For this is what happens when one tempts fate.


	4. Bear

Tarrlok hardly interacts with Korra's monster of a pet. It dwells in the corner of their ostentatious garden, pulling up colorful bushes and digging holes in the earth (just to spite him). Korra laughs it off as he silently fumes, as Naga bowls into his home, her fur mud-soaked and caked in dirt.

Korra bathes Naga diligently, scrubbing the brown back into white with buckets of water splattering onto the tiles, disgusting remnants of the ground clumped at the edges of the tub. His wife has not yet learned the virtues of rinsing out the tub after it is dirtied. Also, she has apparently not gotten around to house-breaking her pet.

She nuzzles the polar bear-dog's furry cheek with her nose, and he finds it amazing that he's in this situation. The Avatar's a wild one, yet patient enough to be the first person to tame a polar-bear dog. She laughs as it licks her face, drool pooling on its chin. The beast trots after her, allows Korra to ride her like a carriage-no, like the ostrich-horses they used to breed domestically decades ago (they are now only widely bred in extremely rural and impoverished areas, particularly in the Earth Kingdom).

They are companions. Friends, even.

Once, Tarrlok confides to Korra that he fears for their child's safety around Naga. She calls him a wimp, stifles her annoyance. So, he really thinks she's good enough to make Naga love her, but not quite talented enough to teach Naga that eating babies is morally questionable.

Korra tells him that the only way Naga can hurt the baby is if one of them sets her on the floor and the polar bear-dog accidentally steps on her. Or if they dress her up as a fish. She's trying to make a joke, but she can tell he's not amused by the firm line of his mouth. Still, she knows a beast of such an enormous size will only frighten a baby. Her expression softens. It's just so like Tarrlok to expect the worst of people; animals are no different.

* * *

He wraps his daughter in furs, always making sure that her head is secured on his palm. She has a full head of brown hair, and she'll grow up in the spotlight like a plant by a windowsill. He holds her close, wishing he can hide her away from the tumult, the talks of the "final step" of the revolution, the fact that there are guards posted around his house.

Tarrlok always hesitates when he needs to place her in the crib. He stands, just stands as if frozen. Blood thunders in his ears. Korra dotes on her and speaks garbled nonsense to the child, and he knows that he'll probably need to be the one to administer discipline. But he truly can't. In his childhood, there were the words and blows, and soon the rightful punishments and the excessive cruelties blurred together. The only acceptance he garnered was from his mother, but she was never in the foreground.

Cradling the baby girl, he rationalizes insistently, as he has for over twenty years, that he isn't his father or mother (or his brother). He may not know constant affection and reason from his past, but he's seen them. After all, he doesn't neglect or mistreat Korra as Yakone did to his mother; he shouldn't make excuses for his shortcomings.

The child yanks on the ponytail slung down his front with her chubby hands. Tarrlok will never hit his daughter, won't threaten her to craft lies for the bruises around her eyes and the violent flinching whenever he raises his hand. He isn't weak like Yakone. All of his life, he'd been taught that he was weak.

Yakone. Noatak. They agreed that his emotional frailty was a flaw. Yet, with all of their stoic proclamations, they died withered, and he stands. They hurt those who wouldn't or couldn't fight back. They manipulated Tarrlok because of his compassion. Yet it only rendered them empty, unable to be happy. Noatak receded into this world of thicky, foggy water and ice.

Tarrlok isn't weak for avoiding his father's path; he's not weak for refusing to follow Noatak to his death. Yes, he's lied and cheated, pitted people against each other for his own gain, but those days are done. A storm in the past.

* * *

"C'mon, Naga won't bite," Korra says with one corner of her mouth lifted, "and even if she does-"

The autumn air is cool on his skin. "_If_ she does?"

"-I'm a pretty okay healer."

"Okay?" Tarrlok says tentatively.

The skin under her eyes crinkles as she laughs. "Better than okay! Katara taught me everything that I know." His eyes darken at the mention of that name, thinking of a quaint house soon forgotten by time. A shelter harboring an old crone, a broken shell of a woman. Korra only warns him not to dare make a joke about her knowledge, though it's not like she can punch him or something.

Naga regards him with pensive black eyes, tilting her head and emitting a low whine. It acts as a question, and it makes his outstretched arm seize. It's almost a thing of emotions. It's not supposed to be so cognizant.

It's not supposed to be a _she_. Animals-they're food. Prey. Sacks of blood and bones.

Once, he dragged an otter-beaver home. His mother had been at the market. His father had been outside of their hut, holding a machete. Tarrlok never questioned why they couldn't have a pet ever again. This was before Noatak and he discovered that they could bloodbend. He cried on his brother's shoulder, sniffing pitifully in the secure confines of night. Noatak assured him that it was just an animal, that it didn't matter.

Naga can't speak, yet she reaches him. Tarrlok pats her head, the coarse fur calm under his quickened pulse.

When he goes inside, Korra following closely behind, Tarrlok sits on the plush couch in a living room far too large for one man. Korra notices the hollowness in his eyes and asks if he'd like to spar, have a short waterbending match. She always has a bounce in her steps. When he declines curtly, she settles beside him, rests her head on his leg.

"I'm sorry," Tarrlok tells her. Turning to where she's on her back, Korra wordlessly pulls on one of his ponytails.


	5. The Name

When Tarrlok's mother gave birth to him, she almost bled to death. They hadn't had time to go into the urban part of the Northern Water Tribe to find less primitive assistance.

Korra gave birth in the hospital. They'd been listening to a radio play when her water broke. He grew flustered, and she only commented wryly about how she'd never find out who the father of the protagonist's estranged son was. How she could act so clearly when she was in tremendous pain, he didn't know, but that's something he's always admired about her.

Tarrlok never thought he'd see her so worn, so encumbered by lassitude. After the birth, which occurred a swift four hours after she went into labor (though she certainly didn't find the time to be that quick), she slept. Slept so peacefully, so at ease. Just like at home when he's still up three hours after he's laid down.

She hadn't been showing when the wedding arrived. Her parents had no clue about her condition, hadn't the slightest idea when Tonraq beamed and lifted her up in a crushing bear hug, and she had laughed and reciprocated the gesture with an exertion of at least twice her father's strength. They only cared about her happiness, though Korra's content disposition faltered behind closed doors.

He held her clammy hand, bought her flowers that she let Naga chew on, gave her extravagant, silken clothes she kept in lumps in the polished hallways and atop the bedroom floor. Flinging them as if they were nothing. Tarrlok never bothered to ask her uncle if she was either too accustomed to riches or simply unaware of their value.

It had been the fifth month when they could no longer hide it. He would smirk and say that he expected that she would bear a son. However, Korra knew better. She just did.

In the waiting room, her friends pace and wait. Tenzin and his family chatter and laugh, containing their worry. It's fresh on their minds, the anticipation of waiting for a new addition to their family. And Korra is family too.

Despite the distrustful glances, Korra has told Tenzin that Tarrlok is okay to her. She confided in her mentor the short weeks before she couldn't hide her pregnanct any longer, when her state became increasingly fatigued. Tarrlok: weird, uptight, smells funny, but not that bad. She expected him to be overly haughty, but he's cold, uncomfortable with being close.

Yes, there are the hand touches and the gifts, but most of his interactions with her are superficial. A glass smile, expensive stuff she'll never wear or use. She's just not like that, easily dazzled by shiny junk. She loved the stuff Bolin gave her, but that was heartfelt—not an obligation.

Mako broods, leaning against the wall, and Asami sits with her legs crossed. Bolin talks to his odd, red rat thing.

"Is Korra okay?" Tenzin asks Tarrlok. Everyone pauses.

"Yes." Tarrlok's voice is uncharacteristically gruff. He's perfectly accustomed to attention and feigning aplomb, yet he wishes that they'd stop staring at him.

A nurse darts through the area, huffing and saying in an exasperated tone, "No animals allowed!"

Pabu squeaks worriedly.

The baby's early, they said. He had his best doctors predict that the child would be born at the end of winter, but it is weeks before that time.

* * *

As she lays on her side, hot and sweaty and miserable, Korra rubs her stomach. She's almost due, she thinks. It's been so long since she's trained. The look on Tenzin's face when she told him, when she planned to announce to the city that she and Councilman Tarrlok would be having a child—well.

Tarrlok worries for her life. How will she protect herself from Amon and the Equalists? Korra just waves him off. Geez, and she thought Mako was a mama goose-hen.

Now, she isn't stupid. Reckless, but not dimwitted. Sure, she's been cocooned with security and importance. But as if she was gullible enough to still believe in the pelican-stork theory. Korra can't say that she never expected that those bleary nights of insistent caresses would lead to this.

When she dozed beside her lover, her breath on his skin, her nose against the scratchiness of his stubbled chin, there was little thought about consequences. Not that the effects of her actions ever caught up with her until now, and even this isn't as bad as it could be.

Korra realizes that what she did caused this, but it never stopped her. Perhaps she thought it wouldn't happen to her. Maybe, even if she doesn't believe in the stupid pelican-stork, she considered herself not like normal people. The spirits would keep it from happening.

It all sounds so ridiculous, so completely self-centered. And it is, no doubt about that. Because of her title, she's never really been in trouble. How many girls would be thrown out, homeless and destitute in her position?

Yet there's still her child's safety. Korra can't really think about why Amon would need her kid, but then again, what better way to "destroy" her?

Her relationship with her husband is distant. They're just conveniencing each other. The personal questions, the tearful confessions, they haven't arrived. Korra has been more emotional as of late, but she feels no strong attachment to her husband. Not that she hates the slimeball. It's not like he's become _more _of a creep.

_"My mother enjoyed making blankets. She made one for me a—" He stops himself abruptly, then clears his throat. "She would make them as gifts."_

_"Does she still do that?"_

_He smiles. _

_"Oh. Um, I mean, is she . . ."_

_"She's still alive." He promised that he'd become anybody but Yakone's son; he never said anything about forgetting his mother._

* * *

"She needs a name," he says softly, though he doesn't expect her to hear him. The room is so sterile, and one of the harsh lights flickers. She turns her head groggily and smiles. The baby has been carried away so the nurses can tend to her.

"Told you she'd be a girl." Tarrlok just barely holds down how disturbed he is at how disoriented the medicines have made her. Korra looks away then and asks, "What was your mom's name?"


	6. Peace

It's years before Amon attacks. Their daughter—Arja—is sixteen.

Korra never really spent much time with people of her own sex, but she finds moments with her daughter to be enthralling. Arja is a ball of curiosity. Korra remembers fondly of the time they went to the Southern Water Tribe and Arja's eyes were consistently round and shimmering intensely.

That wasn't the first time Arja met her grandparents. Korra sent the seventh draft of The Letter that informed her parents of Arja's existence. Later in the month, they appeared right at her doorstep.

Arja explores, and it's not as if she has a restricted hold on her actions. Korra and Tarrlok are lax in smothering her, given their experiences of being shadowed over. She's surrounded by friends. Tenzin's family, Mako and Bolin. Asami, who now runs Future Industries in her father's shameful absence. Even with the Equalists, Korra insists to Tarrlok that walls are just a false form of security. If Amon set his mind to it, especially when he has big robots, these thin walls aren't anything.

They thought the threat was over.

During their last dinner together, Arja head hangs. It's strange how their daughter is so prone to periods of unspeakable sadness. Arja doesn't come to them for assistance, doesn't ask for a short reprieve. She just sobs with a burden more than words. Korra pats her shoulder. It's something she'll never understand.

* * *

There are those days when Tarrlok brushes the stray lint off of his jacket, strolls into the streets and smirks into the cameras thrust in front of his path.

This isn't one of those days. This is a day when he wants to die.

A lone Equalist guard watches them, father and daughter. It's a crude interrogation cell with rusty chairs and a rough wooden table. The lighting is poor.

She's beautiful, demure in her clean, simple dress. Her hair is in a single braid, running down one shoulder.

A curtain of hair hangs in his face. Never has he felt so alone. Not even when Noatak abandoned him.

That feeling when his bending was taken away—ha! He once prayed that Noatak would return and never leave again. How is it that, with their pending union, Noatak has made him more isolated? The spirits have answered all of his wishes accordingly.

Arja states mechanically, her eyes empty like a doll's, "I told him how many guards were posted in the house. And where."

"Why?" he croaks. Part of him hopes that it is a failed attempt at subterfuge, that she inherited her mother's patience and planning skills. No disrespect meant to Korra (where is she?), but it took awhile for her to think less with her gut and more with her mind. He hopes that Arja plans to overthrow Amon somehow. She can fend for herself.

She kneads the skirt of her dress with her fingers and bites her lip. "I-I've grown up with friends who've been through so much. Don't you get it? Forced to be used in the streets, forced to live without their parents. We're—we're lucky." Her voice rises. "How is it fair that we watch them suffer and do nothing? We don't even listen!"

"How is it fair to intimidate the innocent ones? And do you think bombing the streets hasn't created any nonbender casualties, that the bombs are repelled by nice thoughts and your delusions?"

She snarls. He's mocking her! "You passed a law that condemned people for something they can't help! Like it's any big strain on your part!" How dare she? Does she have any idea how much of a toll the battle against Amon has had on him?

No, no. She lives in that purely abstract world where only ideas matter. She's not even Amon or an Equalist; she doesn't believe in violence, of striking when forced into a corner. Arja just thinks everyone will live in peace and never hurt each other again if bending is systematically eliminated year after year.

"I revoked it when your mother freed the protesters in the streets."

There is fresh pain in her eyes, as if she's about to cry. He's ashamed that she's named after his mother.

"But see, justice shouldn't be settled on the whims of the powerful. It should be distributed equally."

"Look at you. I thought I'd taught you to think for yourself." It dawns on him, and he visibly shudders. "You're him. I tried to escape, but everything's caught up with me."

She blinks in confusion at his rambling. "He hasn't taken away my bending yet. I'm sorry, Daddy."

"Don't," he says tersely.

He needs to die, and her fervent eyes, her voice, it's all in his way. He needs to kill her heart, make her hate him. Then he can die peacefully. Without taking away her "daddy."

Tarrlok sneers. "I suppose this is where you two ride into the sunset?"

When his meaning hits her, she recoils and shoots him a hateful glare. "He's not _bedding _me. Mom told me, he said—no." She peers at him earnestly, her forehead knotted in deep lines. "I can't tell you. I am not a silly child!"

"The way he took away my bending—what has he done with Korra," Tarrlok asks, his voice dim and gruff, "or do you care?"

"Did you know that I wasn't your daughter?"

"What has he said?" What could Amon of all people possibly know about that? He and Korra discussed it sparingly. They agreed that they would tell Arja when she was an adult, when they felt that she'd be less emotionally fragile, when her identity had been sorted out. It's not an easy subject, to tell her that he's not her father and he doesn't know who is.

Then Tarrlok laughs bitterly. "I suppose it doesn't matter. I haven't lost a daughter in this whole ordeal."

Tonight, he'll take the sheets off of his bed, make use of the crude hook beside the commode where he's supposed to hang his clothes.

He won't hear the lies, the excuses. If Amon—if Noatak wants a brotherly reunion, Tarrlok will ensure that, just for once, his head is up high while his brother is at his feet.

Arja always wanted to fly. Seeing Tenzin's children—now grown—dance around in the sky, well, it was amazing.

She still can't believe that her mother slept with Amon, even unknowingly. She couldn't bring herself to tell her father about her mother's suicide. Korra hadn't cried, hadn't been frantic. She smiled and kissed her daughter's forehead, whispered an apology.

It was such an easy thing. Her family and friends needed her, but Korra truly couldn't do anything without her bending. It's warped, how her identity as a good person and a dedicated mother wasn't enough to save her, but that is the burden of the Avatar. The new Avatar would rejuvenate the cycle.

Korra's usefulness was over. This was her final stand, her victory. She wouldn't ever again look into the eyes of this man she'd slept with, who chewed away at her sanity. Laughed and threw her inadequacy back into her face. Now she's laughing. Amon's lieutenant found her mother, and Arja refused to hear any of his condolences, refused to hear Amon's silver tongue try to twist this into something of no importance, though her death meant he had no reminder of his own greatness.

He won't kill the benders, Arja tells herself. It's wrong. She doesn't want death. What Arja has done isn't meant to be a betrayal. Through her jewelled, stained window of blessings and privilege, she was ignorant. Now she's free, and she doesn't want it to mean that Tarrlok is imprisoned. Perhaps he'll see reason—one day.

* * *

Her father is dead. The one who changed her diapers, the one who let her cry on his shoulder.

She's supposed to be incensed, indignant; she's supposed to want to burn the city to ashes. But she only feels empty.

(What am I supposed to do? Who am I supposed to go to?)

She tastes the tears and snot on her lips. She hugs herself, hunched against the doorframe of her chambers, absolutely determined not to crumble.

(I only have him now. I only have him.)

Arja has everything she needs to destroy Amon: the truth. He's a liar; his scars are only internal. She can't. In his heart, all he wants is to end the tyranny of people so much like Yakone. Just stopping the "bad benders" isn't enough because the innocent people still have the potential of corruption, and they are still blinded by complacency. Like she had been before she'd seen, before he'd made her see.

A placid girl, now emerging from her cocoon. Despite her parents' leniency, society kept her from the knowing. Arja bends down and retches. She refuses to be sheltered anymore.

There's hypocrisy in her words, especially since both she and Amon are benders. Arja wonders how he can be a bloodbender. How he can stand himself. Yet he'll teach her. Teach her how to heal others of that burden. How convenient it is. He tells her of Tarrlok's past, and she wonders, she wonders.

She's already disgusted with herself (no matter the continuous mental arguments in her favor), and she'll do anything to have a purpose. The ghosts of her parents, her true parents, hang on her shoulders like chains.

* * *

Arja watches as the bending elitists fall. There's no jubilation. Only vigilance.

When they are alone in his quarters, father and daughter (never never never), his expression doesn't change, and his fake scar is not present. He's lost his brother, his only connection to his humanity. His brother. Her uncle. Amon and Tarrlok-the last piece falls into place, and the realization sends her reeling.

(What am I supposed to do?)

Arja feels the wetness on his cheeks as she brushes it away gently with her knuckles.


	7. Summer

His apartment is all dust and order, the musty emptiness of disuse. Korra doesn't particularly commend herself for sleeping with this man who feeds the turtle-ducks and initiates odd conversations. However, it's a break from the world falling apart. If she does nothing but mess up the world outside, she can hide here and forget about everything, forget about the fights and the disappointments.

The heat of summer is in full bloom, and her hunger imitates its intensity. She doesn't like watching him undress, declines when he tries to undress her himself. It's even worse when she oversleeps and has to dress in the dawn light. It's embarrassingly mundane. With a tone of finality and domesticity she'll never curl into.

Korra doesn't want to think about their identities before this, doesn't want to be reminded of her queasiness the first time they were together in bed, when he tore her clothes off of her body. She accidentally punched his chin and knocked him in the chest with her knee. (Hey, she's ticklish.)

She has to admit: for an old dude, he's pretty hot.

There are times when she's not facing him as they join, and she arches her back, collapses and wipes off the tears onto the pillow when it's all too much. When she's failed in her training, when her loneliness gets worse when they're together, when Amon almost ends her life.

The first time, she panicked and bled, and it was the only instance he appeared even midly unsettled. With this look in his eyes as if he was somewhere else, he put a hand on the side of her face and told her that she would heal, that they could stop when she wanted. Korra tensed. No, she never backed down from anything. If she could take earth disks to the stomach, she could take this.

It's complete darkness and they can't see each other. If she wants, she can imagine that it's Mako with his fingers inside of her, with his other warm palm cupping her cheek and stroking her lips (well, in more ways than-oh). Around her, above her. The taint of spices and sweat on her lips, in her nose, entwined within her hair.

But she doesn't pretend. That's not her place. He belongs with Asami, especially after Hiroshi Sato's affiliation with the Equalists.

Yet Mako still looks at her in that way, and she's dismissive. Whether it's concern or the remaining fragments of that passionate tension between them, her interest has long curdled. He's a brother before anything else. Loyal and protective, and as much as she respects him and doesn't want anyone to get hurt, she doesn't need a third parent.

Korra says the man's name when he touches her thigh. She grows bold and leads him to where she wants him to pay his attentions to with her own steadied hands. She won't falter, and he's too slow. He doesn't see her smirk. It amazes her how clinical he makes it all, as if they aren't lovers at all, as if there aren't those little moments when she wakes up and he's disheveled and at peace. The wall is broken.

The sheets are moth-eaten, and she's surprised at his tenderness. At times, he seems so angry. He lives alone, works random jobs, never mentions his past. When she asks, there's a dangerous gleam in his eyes like a desperate, wounded tiger-bear.

She ceases their meetings without contacting him. Korra realizes that she's the Avatar. Her entire life has been easy. No doubts, no complications.

While she'd like to forget about her mistakes, she can't tuck her drooping tail between her legs whenever she meets adversity. Korra can't pretend that she's just a normal girl in an infatuated tizzy; she's the Avatar in an infatuated tizzy. It's the Avatar with her clothes on backwards as she shuffles in and Tenzin spares her a questioning glance.

And as much as she'd like to pretend otherwise, her life as the Avatar comes first.


	8. Childhood

Tarrlok can't say that he appreciates the spring. Though he prefers the hotter seasons to the brittle leaves and snow, he's not grateful for the bugs. Also, the warm weather is not kind to those with long, thick hair.

The garden is well-kept and no longer potted with holes, though the heavy polar bear-dog will probably seek the coolness of the ground soon. So the cycle would begin again: he'll fuss; Korra will cross her arms and laugh at his misery.

His mother told him that children who potty train early are more reserved and organized. While Tarrlok considers himself an educated, sophisticated man, he can't bring himself to rebuke all of the commonly-passed words of knowledge from his village.

That being said, Arja has these traits, though she was a late bloomer in the housebreaking regard. She's an exception; he's encountered plenty of those. As a formerly timid child, he fears that his daughter will be encased within an insurmountable shell.

When he tried to get her to sit on the toilet, she would inform him matter-of-factly, "I don't want to." Luckily, they climbed that hurdle. "Doggyyyyyy!" Yet it's as if his daughter is affected by the seasons. Waterbenders rise with the moon and firebenders rise with the sun, but Arja lights up when the city blooms again.

"No, careful honey. It'll knock you down."

"Naga isn't an 'it'," Korra retorts, patting her polar bear-dog's side, "and she won't hurt her."

She bristles at the smug curl of his lips, the sun hot on her back. "Is that so? That thing could kill a man."

Korra shrugs. "Well, there was this one time where she broke through a window and growled at someone." Without another word, she helps Arja climb the beast. Tarrlok, often hovering at a distance when it comes to Naga, steps forward reluctantly. This family—his family—will be the death of him.

"Look daddy, lookit the doggy! Vroooom." Arja sputters like an engine, gives her father a gap-toothed smile. Korra claps and laughs.

* * *

Tarrlok supposes that he can detect the legitimacy behind his mother's wisdom when he considers how disorganized Arja is. Even with her reticence, she's just as messy as her mother.

He tries to be there, but often Arja goes with her mother on whatever (safe) errands she has. While Korra has finally produced some progress in her airbending, she still meditates and trains at the air temple. Once, she complained with a dramatic pout that Arja is better at finding peace within herself than her mother is. (Or perhaps that's boredom.)

When he's catching up on his news in The Republic City Sun, a rag of a newspaper he formerly had in his figurative pocket, Arja comes into the living room, dragging her feet. But that's not all she drags in.

"Daddy, can I keep it?" She holds up what looks like it's supposed to be canine. Its pelt is overgrown, its eyes bugging out, it's white lashes matted with dirty hair. It's absolutely repulsive.

The newspaper rests on the table in front of the couch. "Where did you get that?" The room is full of animal mounts. Though he finds them too close to his old home and Korra jokes about how they'd hurt Naga's feelings (to which he has no qualms), he has long sat on the bed as Korra dwelled with one leg hanging out of their bedroom window. So close, yet more than an ocean away.

When her homesickness overwhelms her, when she misses her parents and Katara and even one of those dumb White Lotus guards. She's too young to be so wishful.

"I found it outside. I'll wash it and feed it, I promiseI promiseIpromise!"

"It's probably diseased."

"Don't say that!" Arja protests, holding it like it's a sack of mangoes.

He knows fully well that she'll go and ask Korra if he denies her. He wants her to have a real childhood, unlike her parents. While it isn't advised that a child grows up with everything given to them, Arja is such a quiet child. Not as boisterous as he expected. Tarrlok thought he'd get a terror-what he imagined Korra was like when she was little.

Once again, he needs to remember that children are not duplicates of their parents.

Hesitantly, Tarrlok says, "We'll see."

"Thank you!" She sets the dog down and lunges toward him, wrapping her arms around his neck and nuzzling his cheek. Thinking about his daughter makes his stomach plummet when he considers how he manipulated Korra, what he's done in the past. No, he wasn't as bad as Yakone then. Nothing he did was illegal or meant to ruin lives. Directly.

Here, Yakone would say that the puppy is nothing but a blood sack. He'd-Tarrlok doesn't even want to entrench himself in those memories again.

"You'll have to take care of it." Korra will never let him hear the end of this. He is less fortunate when Arja moves away and soon exposes him to the fervent licking of the filthy mongrel just after he's groomed himself.

He tries to see himself in her, though there's not a trace of his blood coursing through Arja. He supposes anything different would be an insult to her own blood, to her own potential.

* * *

"You are such a pushover, 'Councilman'!" Korra playfully shoves him, and he falls back onto the couch. Tarrlok always embraces this sadness when thinking of the lonely little girl stuck behind compound walls, but Korra never sees it that way. Better than being in an ice block for a century, right?

Korra plops down beside him. When Arja goes to sleep, their home is often uneventful. They're always busy, almost always apart. Tarrlok find that he enjoys not being at each other's throats.

Originally, the lack of (many) arguments stemmed from not wanting to agitate her when she was with child and trying to appear like they were a couple. But, despite her frustrating obdurance, he likes the distractions. Tarrlok likes sharing myths and stories about the differences between their tribes, though there are gaps in his verbal recollections.

The days aren't without their struggles. She rebukes any attempts to change her demeanor. It's not that he wants her to be a different person, but she's honest to the point of being naive. In politics, one needs to weigh their words carefully. She wears her heart proudly; he hides his in distaste. Of course, Korra will attest that he's just too accustomed to being a controlling, unctuous weasel-snake. (Her own terminology is far less kind.)

Just then, he sets an arm across her shoulders. She doesn't stop him.


	9. War

The Lieutenant is loyal to a fault. Or so the cliche goes. It's not that he never asks questions; he merely never says them aloud. Helping nonbenders-it's worth any of his leader's shortcomings or idiosyncrasies.

He finds no joy in death; he tried to prevent his wife's death, and he knows the helplessness involved in watching your loved ones slowly fall out of your grasp. One by one, heart by heart. Until it chips away at him and he wonders why he needs a beating heart to begin with. He found companionship in Hiroshi Sato long ago, and he truly lamented the disappearance of Hiroshi's daughter.

When you commit yourself to an ideal, the tangible things in life slip away.

Why, after the Avatar and Councilman Tarrlok died in a house bombing, did Amon demand that they scour the remains of the building? Not that the Lieutenant condones leaving children to die, but why was fishing a crying baby out of the rubble a priority for Amon? Why that specific child? Why such an interest in her? Why did Amon have this intuition that she would be alive or why did he have this hope that the girl survived? How, how did he know?

Perhaps the spirits spoke to him, though the Lieutenant has long stopped believing in them. These are his unspoken questions.

Whatever saves his people. He will follow. He can't afford these reservations, these doubts.

* * *

She's a bender. He's seen her carelessly play with the water in her glasses and cups, seen Amon harshly grab her arm and speak in such a way that she blanches and tears fall down her cheeks.

Her hair cascades down her shoulder. Amon doesn't allow her to acknowledge her heritage. He takes away her old name, and he doesn't want to hear her questions. Who was Arja? she asks. Amon almosts considers ending her life then.

There's something between them the Lieutenant cannot breach. Yes, his leader has many secrets. His enigmatic persona is what makes him invincible, more than human. He doesn't ask why Amon hasn't removed her bending. She's almost grown, and they've taken over Republic City, removed the bending of every citizen that hasn't gone into hiding or escaped.

Except her. She's always the exception. Nestled under Amon's thumb. He keeps his distance, but it's inevitable that their paths cross. She always bows her head; her smiles are forced. She's an abomination, the oppressor. The quiet, cowed oppressor. He teaches her to fight without bending, and she learns of injustice. She tells him that she'd like to heal the sickness from her fellow benders' hearts, but only Amon can do that. There's something in her eyes when she says that, as if she's conveying something to him that he's missing.

In the evening, she sits on the bridge, now deserted. The future is in their grasps, she knows her purpose, yet she must hide who she is.

Amon is not kind when she argues back. How dare she refuse her savior? He almost hits her, yet he stops once he raises his hand. There's an invisible rope tying him back, a perturbing memory she'll know of soon enough.

"Who am I?" she asks the man with the mustache and green goggles. The rosy dusk plays across her face, turning her into a child again. He's too old for grief.

The Lieutenant doesn't answer. It's not his place.


	10. Family

What if Arja had known her parents all of her short life, only to have them stolen from her? Forced underground at the age of nine, she asks where they are. She's scorned, forced to her knees and stripped of her bending. Driven to the edge of darkness. What has she done for them to spit their venom at her?

When she bathes, the water is limp around her. Not an extension of herself anymore; the elements are no friends to the daughter of the Avatar. She combs through her hair, scratches the flakes out of her scalp until it's raw.

Her favorite place is the bridge. Her mother once did this trick where she propelled herself through the water. Arja always wanted to try it, but she never will. It's such an easy thing, she thinks. The water reminds her of her parents; it was where they found peace too. Not death, but contentment, though one can't have everything.

So, she lets herself fall off of the bridge in the pinkened, azured twilight, lets the wind brush the hair out of her eyes, lets the welcoming embrace of the water usurp her entirely as her arms hang uselessly by her sides. Her fingertips throb as she's pulled under. It's really too late to consider what her mother would think, her eyes always set for battle. Her father always had this lingering sadness about him. Maybe she inherited it.

The water seems to compress around her, and she wonders if the pressure closing in on her is just her mind dying. It's loose and free about her one second, yet it's cocooning her—

But she can't control it. She can't, so why is it acting this way? Arja struggles. Does she really want to die? It's not as if she lives a hard life, just an empty one. Not even necessarily because she lost her bending. Between watching nonbenders build things with their bare hands and seeing the Equalists do both magnificent and terrible things, she realizes that her bending isn't mandatory to operate in the world.

It hurts, it was a part of her stolen wrongly, but she filled that void. She'll never have another mother, another father. People who care about her for who she is.

She can't breathe can't breathe and it hurts, but suddenly she's flying.

* * *

The room is cold, and the bed beneath her is hard. Arja awakes reluctantly, yet she can't remember falling asleep. It's as if she's been suspended in time. She's looks up and can barely see the ceiling. The curtain to the clinic bed is partly pushed back, revealing the wall adjacent to her bedside, yet hiding her presence from the rest of the room. Everything is silent, so silent that she can almost hear her heart. When she asked her father why she could sense the beating of her own heart so well, at least seven years ago, he glowered.

"I'm not sure what to do with you," a man in a chair says. His clothes are dark. She adjusts her eyes and—no. It's him. The one who took everything from her in the name of peace and equality. The one with the ghost-face.

"Your existence was an inconvenience, though that was my own fault. I suppose the Avatar and the esteemed Councilman thought that their citizens couldn't count. If I wanted, I could've caused a scandal, but I'm not quite so petty, and the attention would've been ill-advised." Wait—what? "I wondered, 'Am I being paranoid?' I see you now, and I have no doubt."

Arja closes her eyes and croaks, "Who are you?"

"Really, you can't guess?" Pulling his hood down, he begins to take off his mask. "You don't notice the family resemblance?"

* * *

Noatak doesn't quite understand what propelled him to sleep with the Avatar.

He has no true identity. The young Noatak-he hates everything about himself. He loathes the emptiness he felt while bloodbending, the hollow thrill of power, yet any brief displays of love were little weaknesses.

No matter what he does, he is the monster, simply rotten because of the dint of birth. Here he is, blaming his father's blood after all of these years of running away from it and asserting his independence.

Noatak doesn't quite know whether he feels or adapts. If any emotions are merely ornate masks to please others. He's good at that, saying just the right thing by monitoring someone's expectations. It began with his father, and it extends to every individual around him.

His reason dictates that he wanted to take the Avatar's heart and crush it while digging information out of her. The Avatar, while powerful, was emotional, erratic. She'd recede, then pull closer. Tears and the prick of nails, pleasure. He isn't accustomed to being on the receiving end of affection and forgiveness. She apologized to him when he told her that his family is dead. Hm, it is partly the Avatar's doing, after all. The Avatar said that only the present matters (as if she knew remorse), that she felt relieved to be there, even when she sometimes treated their trysts as burdens, when she succumbed to happiness in angry tears.

She told him of her suspicions about Hiroshi, and so Amon prepared accordingly, though he couldn't exactly cite the source of his precautions.

Their meetings transpired haphazardly because his schedule was unpredictable, consumed by his own muddled agenda. They "first" met in the day, yet that was an exception. Normally, he spent his days as Amon and his nights as Noatak. Well, not Noatak. A man. So, he hid in shadows in the sunlight and exposed himself in the moonlight.

And their daughter—how is it that a boy who was supposed to die can mature to bring life into the world? This second life with a child—it's a dangerous path. But he will prove the spirits wrong. They howled for his death, and he emerged triumphant. He's more than the Avatar, more than the supernatural.

His daughter. Whether inside a lie or the truth, she's the daughter of two powerful people. An orphan reclaimed. She's lucky; she'll never have the lure, the penchant for sacking veins, regarding others as sacks of blood to be controlled. Messy, stringy bags with soft exteriors. Is that what he thought when he held the Avatar in his arms?

Arja. Her name is Arja. Yes, just like Tarrlok to be sentimental.

* * *

Even though she is the nonbender and he is the master bloodbender, the promise of a new family controls him. A family unlike the secrecy and torments that permeated his former life. One day, they can start over. He won't be a monster. He'll be a man, and she'll be his daughter. She won't cry in his presence, won't wish death upon herself, won't have to take special herbs to numb her hopelessness.

How is it that he can abandon his movement? He tires of the secrecy, tires of hiding himself. Arja hates him, hates the man, not the monster. He appreciates it. She's the first person to not believe in a lie.

It makes sense for her to react so awfully to the truth. He's a disgusting person, and his lies are terrible because they emanate from him. To compensate for his own emptiness, he creates distractions, meaningful illusions that will impress others with traits he is devoid of: honor; integrity; empathy. His false identity has noble intentions. A legitimate reason for his actions.

What is Noatak's purpose? To be a leech, to thrive on blood and the sorrows of others. Noatak insisted a long time ago that his cause was to help nonbenders, but he went astray, like a child in a tempest, like a tiger-seal in a snowstorm—or is it the other way around?

She'll never forgive him for what he is. Arja argues, smacks him across the face. Noatak won't hit back, and it's not as if anybody but her will see his visage. She says that she'd feel guilty if he were truly a nonbender. Then again, guilt is a delayed emotion in their so-called family.


	11. Bird

The sky is a flashy shade of blue with the whirring of machines illuminating the open environment. The world comes alive with the roar of engines and the acrid smell of gasoline.

"Birdie!" shouts the flailing, four-year-old Arja in her mother's arms. She points at a plane taking its test flight. It's been three years without a strong Equalist presence in Republic City. Amon fled, and his followers faced persecution. While the Avatar asked for amnesty, fought for it when the Council refused to listen to her (excluding Tenzin, and Tarrlok slept rather discontentedly on the couch those nights).

Eventually, with the threat of retaliation and the revoking of the Avatar's support and potential aid should the threats come to fruition, the Council members relented. Amon's followers dispersed into the streets, the gaps in the seams.

In the increasing tumult between benders and nonbenders, worse than ever, Asami and Korra worked alongside each other to help them. There are so many interest groups to appease, so many enemies to make.

"Neat, aren't they?" Asami removes her gloves and takes off her goggles. "I found the schematics in my father's old workshop."

"Wonderful," Tarrlok says dismissively. The Sato girl shakes her head.

"Hey, Councilman," Korra says, bouncing Arja as she rocks lightly, "you think we have a budding pilot in our future?" Asami laughs, but Tarrlok finds no inkling of amusement in that prospect. Yes, they know of their daughter's fascination with flying. She plays with her fingers now, distractedly pushing them together and spinning them as if imagining a heated battle.

Tarrlok's pushing past forty now, and he can do without the heart problems or an increased chance of stroke. "Absolutely not." His muscles tighten just being near those obscenely fast racing cars the Sato girl (well, _woman_) owns. Planes? No, out of the question. He's lenient, but he'd rather not lose his family a second time.

"You can't keep her grounded forever," Korra says.

Asami clasps her hands together. "They're safe, but I understand why you'd want to be careful." Her smile doesn't reach her eyes. While Asami adores the infant and enjoys Korra's company, she can't forget the suspicions, the snide remarks from Councilman Tarrlok. It still haunts her, people doubting her intentions.

Arja stretches her arms out and emits chicken-pig noises. Korra lifts her into the air and starts spinning in dizzy half-circles.

"Don't fall! There's an incline there—" Tarrlok rubs his forehead and sighs. He can't keep up with his wife or daughter. If he could, he'd frolic (or something a tad more dignified) along with them.

Though he's trained extensively over the years, resorting to a desk job has somewhat softened his physical resolve-or so his wife says when she pokes his belly. It really isn't _that _bad. She once joked that he talks enough to lose a bunch of weight; if only that were the case.


	12. Appearances

Tarrlok can comfortably compare watching his wife eat to witnessing two satomobiles collide. It is a tragically horrific, yet intriguing event.

"Do you ever fear of choking?" he asks, the lines in his forehead deepening in exaggerated concern.

Her elbows on the table, soup dripping down her chin, Korra beams. So free of inhibitions; he envies her. (Oh, and she's rather gaseous as well, yet she wonders why he opens the bedroom windows at night to allow the cleaner toxins of the inside to mask the odor.) When he was young, Tarrlok only had moments of ease prior to the discovery that he could bend. Now he maintains the image of a new man, even though he feels small. With all of his boasting, with all of his decrees, he's only a single person trying to rally together a divided city.

Korra rubs her nose thoughtfully.

* * *

In the ugly, frantic heat of midsummer, Tarrlok awakes with sweat pooled in his underarms, dampening his forehead and sticking his skin to his pillow. As usual, it's hours before the sunrise. He once surmised that his lack of decent sleep was derived from a waterbender's connection with the moon. It was rejuvenating, yet he never had problems sleeping until Noatak ran away. He never had these dreams.

The bedroom floor is littered with pillows. Much to the dismay and endless frustration of the cleaning staff, Korra flings any superfluous pillows out of the bed, and she is never mindful of who will pick them up. She never intentionally irks those under their roof—except for Tarrlok himself—but she can be inconsiderate in many regards. At the compound, she always had people to clean up after her, to fulfill all of her needs. Not that Tarrlok is particularly generous.

Surprisingly, she is not beside him. It is a large bed, but he can tell when she is not present. How? It's best not to elaborate.

He rolls over to see her side of the bed with its sheets twisted and in disarray. Korra's standing at a window in her day clothes, her back to him. (They often sleep with their backs to each other.) That's another habit of hers that somewhat bemuses him: she won't change into something else when she goes to bed. All of the accumulated sweat and grime of the training hours—he shudders just imagining it. It took awhile just for her to ease her hair out of those ponytails. (He doesn't necessarily like how she wears her hair because it reminds him too much of Noatak, but he won't say anything.)

Something about "being prepared." Despite her lack of trouble falling asleep, he's had to shake her awake when she mumbles feverishly about Amon, thrashing and begging in her nightmares.

When Tarrlok sits up, the mattress groaning beneath him, she turns. He can't see her expression. "Did I wake you up?" Korra murmurs.

"No, Korra." How oddly civil it sounds, to address her as "Korra." When did she cease being "Avatar Korra" in his mind?

It's nothing, he wagers. It's simply less of a hassle to call her by her name.

"I didn't think my suggestion that you should rejoin my task force would keep you up all night." Tarrlok slips out of bed and approaches her, his eyes burning from unrest.

Korra's eyes reveal nothing as she replies, "Don't flatter yourself, bub."

The window is opened, letting in tepid air. Soon, Tarrlok might sneeze his ("disproportionate," according to Korra) nose off as the pollen whisks in. Their house and his satomobile were covered in pollen in the morning, and his wife asked why he had his preening butt in a big, fat wad over it.

Korra then bent down and sniffed the hood of his car, much to his mild confusion. Even after a few years, she's unused to the city. The hot months are so different than what she's experienced. At home, the seasons hardly proceed with such dramatic transitions.

Korra has her back to him again, and he doesn't catch her expression. Her voice is so unlike her, calm and low. Tarrlok doesn't know what to discern from her mood.

She says, "What am I supposed to do?"

"About what?"

"Amon. The Council." She moves her head for a moment, staring pointedly at him, as if reaching inside and plucking all of his lies out with startling awareness. "You. My airbending. The baby. Everything." She sounds so exhausted, older than her years. Without meeting his gaze, her weary eyes overlooking the partial ocean view, Korra continues, "Sometimes it's like I'm drowning and I can't get out. And everyone else is too, but I can't save them." Up close, she's a little more than a head shorter than him, yet she can pick him up and throw him across a room with ease. Not that such events are worth revisiting. "I'm alone."

"How can you say that?" he asks, placing a hand on her shoulder. For a moment, she stiffens. No matter what they do for the sake of appearances, they never bond so closely when alone. They haven't consummated their marriage. It's a political alliance, and that's all. She doesn't care for him. "Korra, you're the bravest woman I know."

"Don't let the chief hear you say that." He hears the mirthless humor in her voice. "Those cords really chafe."

The bedroom door is already opened so fresh air can circulate. A sudden coldness breezes in. Just then, there's crying from the other room. Korra gently grabs his hand and lifts it off of her, moving to go comfort her infant daughter.

* * *

Tarrlok had not known if he could love the child as his own, but she presented to him a second chance. Before Arja was born, that was all that mattered: he'd show the spirits. He'll show them. Councilman Tarrlok won't leave this world without any fanfare. Now, he'll be a better husband, a better father than Yakone ever was.

Then again, that isn't a lofty goal.

However, fear stunted his ability to take chances. Noatak had been the fearless one, the one with no inhibitions. While Noatak was stoic and carried the burden of Yakone's demands, he would leap into a situation without acknowledging his own mortality. Much like Korra.

Arja's hair is fine, and he braids it. She giggles and squirms. He smiles. This is the closest he's ever been to sheer giddiness. After years of coercion and schmoozing, it terrifies him to be responsible for someone else who trusts him by default. The girl doesn't know any better as she wiggles and fumbles, bites her own toes and chews on her pacifier.

Korra hardly speaks to him after she confided in Tarrlok about her insecurities, never even jokes or playfully punches him in the arm. They sometimes eat separately. She hates appearing or feeling helpless, and he can relate. Korra may not fear choking, but she's scared of drowning.

* * *

"You always resort to fire," he observes one evening. "Why?"

Korra's sitting on the bed, her legs dangling off of it. He removes his coat. As miserable as the summer has been, the recent rains have cooled the air considerably. He needs to keep his garments from getting soaked. The instability and unpredictability of the weather in Republic City is one of its lesser qualities. Tarrlok enjoys conformity, met expectations.

"Yeah." She puts a hand on her arm, as if insecure. "Well, it's the last one I mastered. Just comes easily, I guess. No offense, but it's easier than bending that requires you to have the stuff around it, and waterbending has never really been that proficient."

He flashes her a bitter smile. "You have no idea."

"I'm not really into freezing people's faces off." There's an accusation in her voice, and he quells most of his indignation. Does she believe he's willing to commit murder, particularly after he's spent decades convincing himself otherwise?

"I don't let them suffocate," he retaliates, an unusual edge in his voice.

Korra's lips purse. "Yeah, well, you could really hurt them with that. What's the point? Sure, they can't see, but pinning down their legs and arms is good enough."

"They're Equalists. We can't afford to be careful."

Her eyes darken. "It's not like they chi-block by headbutting you." Not letting that point die, but rather going on a tangent, Korra then says, "Where did you learn to waterbend, anyway?"

There's a deadness in his voice that makes her doubt herself. "My father. He wasn't a kind man."

"Oh." Korra sets her hands in her lap. "But he must've been a good waterbender, right? I mean, you have a lot of problems. Weird smell, funny clothes, but you can bend okay."

Dryly, he replies, "Much obliged, and he couldn't bend." No doubt—letting loose that fact is a mistake. She'll ruminate on it, yet Tarrlok increasingly cares less about maintaining his facade in his private chambers.

"Now I'm confused."

"I'd rather not discuss it."

Korra swallows, looking away. "I don't want to join the task force again."

They've already had this talk before—a few years ago. She'd been pregnant, but he hadn't known. He'd shouted at her and told her that she was faltering in her duty to the city. Korra retaliated unkindly. Despite their differences, neither of them can tolerate when their actions are questioned.

The next time they met, Tarrlok suggested marriage after one of her probending friends idiotically slipped the secret that she was with child. Their wedding was nothing like a traditional Water Tribe ceremony. His mother never wore a betrothal necklace, so he never bothered to craft Korra one. He figured that it wasn't necessary, much like Yakone never did little, insignificant things for his mother. Those times when he argued with Korra make Tarrlok cringe inwardly. As useless as most of the baubles she receives are, he doesn't want her to feel removed from a place where she's welcome.

He settles down beside her tentatively. "You have nothing to be scared of. I won't let anything happen to you." So, it's come to this. He's talking like a lovesick fool. Next, he'll be dancing in the meadows and composing saccharine serenades.

Korra snorts and rolls her eyes. "Please, don't get all patronizing on me."

Tarrlok rests his hand on her own, which is holding onto the bedsheet, and he's glad that she doesn't tense or move away. He can understand why she's so lively. It distracts her from everything falling apart. If Korra goofs around, she can forget that she's in Avatar Aang's shadow; Tarrlok has seen his fair share of shadows. Is this what prompted her nightly romps that resulted in Arja? Did she need to pretend that, for just a few hours, that she wasn't Avatar Korra? She wasn't the Avatar, and the man wasn't a menace bent on disarming her. It is such a mundane act—to couple with someone.

"I'm not trying to talk down to you," he says steadily.

"Sure, whatever, but I can handle myself. It's not like I'm the worst Avatar ever. Maybe."

"I'm sure there was one who was less productive," Tarrlok jokes. And there it is, that fire in her eyes again, no longer fueled by disdain. She slaps his arm with her free hand.

Then they just sit, his hand warm on hers, making it itch with the contact. Well, Korra already knows she's allergic to him. His stuffy cologne gives her a headache.

Her forehead knits in pensiveness, and his wife shakes her head. "Um, I don't really know what to say here."

Sincerely, he says, squeezing her hand, "Korra, I'd like to apologize for not being respectful to you during our encounters before the wedding." Wedding. It makes her think of parties except with that fluffy stuff. That fluffy, boring stuff that doesn't involve flying a dragon into a volcano and killing everyone.

What does Tarrlok want? Why is he acting like this?

"Yeah, you're definitely going to have to make that up." She leans forward and smiles slyly, immersed in his slight discomfort at the sudden, abrupt closeness. "I know just the thing."


	13. Hopelessness

No matter their shortcomings, they take this night like it's the last one they'll ever know.

Korra and Tarrlok have slept in the same bed for awhile. There were nights when he didn't return, so immersed in paperwork. Same with her. Korra would stay over at the air temple, where she was always welcomed. Her excuse was training. In truth, she couldn't stand him then.

"I wish we'd been able to do this under normal circumstances," Tarrlok says, his hand on her cheek, running back along her skin to sift through her tangled hair.

As if they're a normal couple on a normal night. As if he's not two decades older than her, established. As if they aren't the Avatar and the Councilman, ready to be thrown at the very center of the war in the city. As if they are home in their comfy bed and not miles away, tucked back in a shoddy place to ensure that they aren't taken in the night.

As if they both aren't frightened to death.

Korra says, "I don't even know what a 'normal circumstance' is."

* * *

Given his past instructions in the art of bloodbending, it will be horrifically unsightly (coincidental? ironic?) if Council Tarrlok perishes of a heart attack. Never had he thought he'd lose his composure as quickly as he did when Korra took it upon herself to learn how to drive in his vast driveway. Worse, she expected him to sit in the passenger's seat and risk his life to teach her.

He will surely regret this.

"Wait, that's the—"

"Okay," Korra says loudly, not bothering to keep her eyes on where she's going, "so this is the br—" The vehicle lurches forward.

"—gas!"

"—whoa, monkey feathers!" Tarrlok believes that Tenzin and Pema already have a handful of children, and he certainly will never ask the former for any favors, but they dropped by and Korra gave them Arja for the day. She says that Arja likes to play with Rohan. It's for the better that she isn't present here. Her scruffy little rat of a dog is undoubtedly inside eating something Tarrlok's going to need later. Admittedly, it hasn't yet chewed up something he misses terribly. _Yet_.

"I believe there's a reason why they have that unfair stereotype of women being shoddy drivers, and I'm looking at her."

Korra sticks her tongue out. "Oh man, you didn't like that bush, did you?"

"Now you're just trying to spite me." Tarrlok slumps down and sighs. "You need to—"

"Hey, bossy passenger! I got this!"

"No, you most certainly do n—"

The satomobile halts abruptly, and he would've flown out of his seat if he hadn't had the belt to hinder his ascent. Korra's mouth splits into a wide grin.

"See? My masters always said I was a quick learner! And you know what? I'm hungry!" Korra perks up in satisfaction as she takes in his physical state. "Hey, there's actually some hairs out of place!"

"Perhaps you should let me take the wheel."

Sliding down in her seat, Korra wraps her arms around herself and laughs. "You look ruffled, old man."

"I am not old, though this experience has tacked some years onto my age."

"Nah. Probably only like, what, five seconds?" She scoffs. "Pf, baby. No wait, you're old. C'mon, you're such a priss, 'Councilman'!"

"Those were the longest five seconds of my existence." Of course, the longest moments of his life were those with futile hope or dread. As he waited for Noatak to return, when he expected to trip over his big brother's half-buried corpse as his mukluks crunched in the snow.

Korra nods in approval, unaware of his dwindling temperament. "Thanks!"

* * *

The next week is daunting.

After Tarrlok's arm is harmed in an Equalist attack on city hall and he falls off the second story of the building, Korra rushes to heal him.

He's seen better days.

It's nothing, he insists, and she says the same thing for a different reason. His injuries are nothing, and her healing him is just something anyone would do if they were in her situation.

Tarrlok says that he can heal himself, but he took quite a tumble. He opens his eyes to see her above him, an open scratch leaving blood to run down her cheek. Tarrlok hoarsely repeats that he can heal himself. Korra's eyes gleam worriedly, and she takes the measly water supply seeping into the soil of nearby potted plants and helps him.

"You almost died," she says, one hand supporting his back as he sits up.

Steeling himself against the pain in his ribs, Tarrlok says, "And I suppose I should thank you."

Korra laughs. "Yup, that's me, going around and saving the helpless, pretty little princesses."

"At least you acknowledge that I'm well-groomed."

The thoughts rush over them at the same time: is their daughter okay? Has the air temple been attacked?

* * *

They are moved elsewhere, somewhere more enclosed and guarded, closer to the police headquarters. An evacuated hotel "condemned" because of a particularly rampant spider-rat infestation. An infestation bad enough for heavily-armed cops to be secreted inside.

(And, hmph, if Equalists are the exterminators and benders are the spider-rats . . .)

After the city hall attack, there wasn't an invasion of the air temple, but there is no room to take chances.

Neither of them want to leave their daughter, to even roam into a separate room. Then, Korra and Tarrlok make the hardest (or perhaps the easiest) decision in both of their lives: she should go with Tenzin and his family in their escape. They both tried to prevent any tears on the first night without Arja. There's no need to ask for assurance that she'll be cared for. Tenzin has never proven himself to be unreliable, no matter the political differences he has with Tarrlok.

If they get caught—Tarrlok has sworn never to bloodbend again. But he will crush every single part of Amon with slow, calculated precision if that monster even dares to glimpse at Arja.

And that bloodlust makes him deteriorate inside. He always considered Yakone to be the brute, and Tarrlok has dedicated his life to sophistication.

It's the first night Korra and Tarrlok sleep close together, facing each other and foreheads touching. As if they're scared of being pulled apart. They both stay in their day clothes, but Korra won't admit that she's frightened. No way. Water leaks from the roof, but neither of them make any moves to do anything about it. They try to make small talk, and eventually get to the subject of Tian, Arja's dog.

"She's a girl dog, Tarrlok," Korra corrects.

Tarrlok sighs, pulling his body away from hers, his hand brushing against her knuckes. "Does it really matter in the end?"

"I should be out fighting," she blurts, "I'm the Avatar."

His eyebrows crease. "If Amon takes away your bending, it's all over."

Earlier in the day, Tarrlok took three flowers out of a chipped vase in the lobby. They were wilted, though his intent was sincere. And what's a little theft in the midst of near-mayhem? After what he's put Korra through, after all of his failings, it's the least he can do before they're swept up by the hurricane.

"What are these for?" Korra asked, petting the brown-tinged, white petals before setting them on the nightdresser.

"Saving my life. Tolerating me. What was it you said—'everything'?"

* * *

Korra realizes now that she can tolerate Tarrlok. The deserts of the central Earth Kingdom must be freezing over.

"Um, Tarrlok." They sit together on the bed, afraid to move just in case it'll cause the world to implode, the temporary, stable peace to fall away from under their feet.

"Yes?"

Might as well ask now. "Who's Noatak?"

His eyes are piercing. "What did you say?"

Korra raises her voice, "No-a-tak."

Ignoring her boldness, Tarrlok inquires, "Where did you hear that name?" She doesn't like his tone. It isn't dangerous because then he'd be sprawled out on the floor with a dislocated jaw if he ever insinuated that he'd cause her or their daughter harm. But he did—and he never will.

"I—your nightmares. I mean, you did have that one dream about a giant lion-turtle sitting on your face and smothering you to death, so it might be nothing."

Nobody else knows the fate of Yakone. What will she do if he expresses his deepest secrets, if he divulges in her that he could bloodbend? Could? No, can. It's not just something one forgets, to crawl into another person and have their heartbeat stuck in the base of your neck.

If Tenzin were here, would she run to him? Would she have him arrested? Would she be ultimately disgusted with him? Does he even deserve to continue this charade?

His voice hollow, he tells her who Noatak is. His dead brother. The brother he should've died with.

Tarrlok tells her everything, and Korra's expression shifts between confusion and horror. Horror toward him? No, Tarrlok is no mere innocent, but he's not his father. He's not.

Her eyes get progressively shinier, yet she remains calm, quiet, allowing him to continue, squirming from having to sit still. What did he have to go through so that such events pass from his mouth without him utterly breaking down?

She hugs him, and it knocks the breath out of Tarrlok. The sudden closeness seems so right. Korra's always been told that there's a special time when you're ready, when everything feels just right.

"If they capture Arja, it's all my fault," she murmurs.

"Korra—"

"How could I have been so reckless? It's like I've given Amon someone else to hurt." Korra leans her head on his shoulders, clutching his shirt tightly.

"She's not fodder. Amon is a radical, but I don't think he'd inflict harm upon a small child." Not that he knows what that monster is capable of. Tarrlok doesn't believe any of those words, but he won't tell Korra that. They need hope. Empty reassurances. They made the best choice.

She wonders why Amon hadn't defreated her while she was incapacitated for the four months she announced that she was pregnant. Outbreaks of violence were more common, but—

(I'm saving you for last.)

Korra pales. No, she's protected until he rips away everyone else around her.

No, no. They're safe. Amon's a step behind this time, and that pleases her, though she'll never kill the lingering doubts in her mind.

They might die; they might lose their bending, though she can't see much of a difference in those two scenarios.

When she finally decides to sleep with Tarrlok, she reasons that it's part of being a normal couple. As the Avatar, she cannot avoid things anymore, but she can do them on her terms. They're married, and she's young and nubile.

(Yet isn't this why she wants to do this, to forget the world for a moment? No, she can't do that anymore. Not like last time.)

If it's an equal deal, she has nothing to be afraid of. She has friends, family. Bolin, Mako, and Asami are close by. She's not in a safe environment anymore with the newest onslaughts of violence, but this may be her only chance to connect with him in this way.

Face it, she doesn't love him. After Bolin and Mako, Korra doesn't like the thought of infatuation. Or so she keeps saying over and over in enough circles to make her head spin.

She's the Avatar. Yeah, Aang got to have a happy family, but these are different times, and she's not Aang. And she never will be.

"None of—_that _is your fault," she consoles him. "You were just a kid."

He smiles grimly. "I appreciate the sentiment."

After a moment, she asks, "Are you scared?"

"I'm terrified," he confesses, his voice reedy. She picks herself off of his shoulder and strikes. Korra reaches to press her hands on his cheek; she kisses him, curling her other hand into a fist in her lap to keep it from trembling. He doesn't reciprrocate immediately, and she wonders if she's made a mistake.

Then Tarrlok clasps her chin in his hands and returns it. She's never kissed anyone like this. Despite their rampant lust, her first lover hardly did this at all.

Korra breaks the kiss, moves his hands away from her face. "I want to . . ." She wants to believe that this situation can end well, that there can be a day where they can just _be_. That better days are ahead, days of leisure.

Korra doesn't know if he catches her drift as she pats the bed. He does. Tarrlok rests a hand on her knee. "Are you certain?" He leans forward as if concerned. "I don't know if I'm allowed purchase some contraceptive herbs."

"You can ask for them," Korra says. "You're not gonna crush 'em into your 'famous' tea, are you?"

"Why?" Their voices are both smaller than usual.

"Nothing, nothing." Korra sighs. "Can't we worry about that later?"

"Forgive me for being intrusive," he says, smiling with one side of his lips, "but is that what you said last time?"

They both laugh. She says, "It shouldn't last too long."

"Excuse me?"

"Well," she teases, "you might not be able to keep up."

"I thought you preferred the older types."

"That's why."

Korra hopes this brief ease can diminish their worries, the worries that leave them both nauseous and shaking. She debates on whether or not she'll have to pretend that someone else is underneath her this time. No. Here she can pretend, but not about identities. Korra needs to pretend they're at home and it's been a busy day of laughter and punches as she trains at the air temple.

"I'm sorry for everything you've gone through," she says, holding one of his ponytails in her hand.

He meets her eyes sadly. "Well, what doesn't kill us only makes us stronger, correct?"

Korra's visage scrunches. "Who said that?"

"Precisely." Tarrlok ponders, then adds, "A very lucky person."

Without another word, they begin undoing each other's ponytails. He runs a hand through Korra's hair, and it makes everything worse for her emotionally. It's such a loving gesture compared to what she's used to, the complete juxtaposition between tenderness and candidness. What's she supposed to do?

Her pulse drumming in her ears, she spends at least five minutes attempting to undress him. Stupid, stupid Tarrlok and his complicated clothes with their layers. Korra accidentally whips her top in his face before she completes unbuttoning his elaborate shirt. At first, Tarrlok's hesitant about her seeing him in such completion, noticing how soft his belly's grown; of course, Korra, despite her healthy form, has her own share of stretch marks and imperfections. His brief lapse in confidence is endearing to her.

Soon, they're both exposed to each other, and Korra's throat tightens and goosebumps prickle her skin. She's done this before, back when it would hurt, when Korra bled a little the second time and angrily pushed her lover away from her until she was ready again.

Boy, had she been agitated. Not even her body could be normal. Katara told her in one of those grown-up talks that a girl who exercises as extensively as she does won't suffer from much pain when the time comes.

Korra almost cried then, but she stopped herself. It was supposed to feel good like in those pages she tore out of books in the compound's library and wadded under her mattress for recreational purposes. How is it that she couldn't even do _this _right?Mako and Asami could probably see fireworks, enjoy normal couple things.

It seems so trivial, but in her mind, if she couldn't even do such an ordinary thing without something going awry, how can she help the oppressed while simultaneously defeating Amon? A slippery slope, sure, but she couldn't even have a crush without being stupid and causing some big drama, couldn't even seek physical comfort without bruising in the aftermath.

Korra lays back. Tarrlok's large hands tease the undersides of her breasts, and she wonders what it is about dudes and boobs. Sure, it doesn't feel awful, but there are more suitable places for his attention.

She's really doing this. She's really, really doing this. Korra, propped up by the pillows, guides his hands to just where she wants him to sate her like she did with the first guy. The first guy—it sounds so hollow and meaningless. Nothing.

She hopes he's okay. Not captured by Amon.

Unlike Tarrlok's careful ministrations, the man before was greedy, mechanical. It all seems so silly, but those nights had been a way to cope. For both of them. Instead of the lingering sadness Tarrlok suppresses with stark clothes and material wealth, her first lover just receded. To stop from hurting, he didn't feel at all—or hid it so well, the agony like rotten meat piling together in a rubbish pile.

She couldn't look at him like she can meet Tarrlok's eyes in arguments and confessions. She can't even remember if his eyes were blue or gray or a combination of both. They were diluted, as if he watered down his true eye color to hide himself even more. Arja has his eyes, but they're so clear and gentle.

When her husband bows between her legs, his thumbs brushing against her thighs, it's something so strangely altruistic. He isn't expecting any compensation; Korra's gratification is all that matters. It's a far cry from the man who let the press bait her into joining him on his task force, from the man who let her be the one who was in the newspapers as failing to apprehend Amon.

With that thought, she pulls at his hair, her heart tugging, tearing out of whatever socket it's sequestered in. It aches, burns under her skin, beating quickly and driving her blood faster through her veins.

Korra hates the smell of this, something so embarrassing and personal.

Listening to the radio, sparring, playing with Arja together. Reluctantly, she noticed long ago that Tarrlok's a great dad. Capable of being someone other than that persistent creep who sent Korra unwanted gifts, denigrated and questioned her.

His palm touches her stomach, his fingers roving around her side without much pressure, tracing loose circles on her hip. There's no urgency as he pries and gives to her with a building of some emotion she'll never be willing to admit, even though this is something that they'll never do again. The storm is coming, she knows it.

The build up inside of her becomes too much. Her hair plastered on her forehead, sticky with sweat, Korra sits up and grabs his shoulders. Tarrlok meets her eyes and registers her intent. They position themselves with her above him, his head near the end of the bed.

Korra never thought she'd willingly bed Tarrlok, never thought she'd be a mother, never thought any of this would happen in her life of training in an infuriating loop.

It's still nothing like those pages. She's sleepy, yet she won't be able to sleep tonight. Korra has a headache from the dank scent of the mildewed room with its cobwebs and water stains, a queasiness rising in her stomach as the world crashes around them. It's only them there together. It's their night. She's in complete control. No exhausting fight for power.

Korra leans down to kiss him, and his fingers caress her cheeks, her chin, her neck. It's far from a cold gesture, but she can't help but think that she has her entire life ahead of her. A life of duty. How can she make any of this work when she's stumbled so far?

A wet need settles in her again, though with less intensity than before. The dull pounding behind her eyes increases, and it occurs to her that she no longer has any pretenses with this man. She trusts Tarrlok.

That sneaky creep, Korra thinks wryly. He really did win her over in his own weird way.

She wants to wash away all of the pain, all of the fear and loss he's endured. They both have had their fair share of nights where they've helped each other during particularly awful nightmares.

Korra's head is positioned in the crook between his neck and shoulder, her forehead on his plentiful mane of hair. Lightning flares in the distance, but neither of them pay it any heed.

When it's all done and they're beneath the covers, Tarrlok snores rather noisily for someone who's all about appearing proper. Korra's lightheaded and melting, and she can't discern how to move her arms and legs in the intricate knot they are in.

This isn't even a big leap, though she never thought herself capable of going through this again. Given the emotional complications, the consequences she so blatantly ignored.

Things aren't hopeless, she repeats in her head as she evades sleep for another hour. At least Arja is safe.


	14. Reunion

Often when two lovers reunite, there's an exchange of hushed words and secreted kisses. When Amon reveals his face to Korra, she spits on it. She demands to know where Tarrlok is, where her daughter is.

Arja's "real" father—this liar, this cheater. This man she shared a bed with. He spins stories that she can't believe. He and Tarrlok are—no, it's too much a coincidence to be real. He's playing with her mind. He thinks Korra's really that gullible.

Noatak tells her how to act, how to dress; she'll dress as she pleases. He never make any advances on her.

Good. She'd rather die than allow him to touch her again.

* * *

When Amon heard that his baby brother was betrothed to the Avatar, he laughed for a good minute. His lieutenant warily inquired if he needed to get a doctor. His amusement soon dissipated when he learned that the Avatar was pregnant.

He knew that he was the father. During one of their doomed meetings, the oblivious girl told him that she hadn't ever had such relations with anyone else.

It was a cover-up. So, his little brother snatched the girl who unknowingly carries the child of her worst enemy—who happens to be her betrothed's brother.

Oh, what a wonderful sense of humor the spirits have.

* * *

He's not his old self. He's Amon. Pregnant women are unjust targets, yet he wishes it weren't so. Letting the child live is actually quite selfish. The child won't have a good life. It's already in place; its fate is already set.

After Tarrlok and his wife are imprisoned and stripped of their bending, Amon ventures to their home. The circumstances around the home are bleak, the ground gutted like the snow-dusted animals Father brought home. Any companions who can rescue her have been neutralized.

The girl's room is small. Besides the large bed, it looks like a baby's room, with a mobile dangling above her sleeping form. Arja is curled in a fetal position, vulnerable and untouched by her heritage.

He remembers the times when things were not so complicated, when two boys played in the snow. The only bloodshed occurred when there were tiny nicks, scrapes on their knuckles.

It almost reduces him to tears. He can't stand it. Amon has long forgotten how to cry, but it makes him think. Thinking that this can't last. It never does. The brief, humorous jealousy and eventual bonding the brothers underwent together, it's all gone. Obliterated.

As naive and immature as it is, he'd give anything to rebuild their family, and perhaps he can salvage some poor imitation of his former life.

* * *

It's his child. She's his child. This breathing person who has tantrums and cries and asks where her momma is. She looks so much like him, a life in the midst of death and destruction. It would've been so simple to let Korra miscarry. He could have just easily killed it and saved the child from its future.

It's not meant to be, a pleasant reunion. They're all meant to combust, to spare the world.

Amon's exposing her to horrors just by not finding the Avatar and bloodbending her so subtly that they'd think it was a natural occurrence.

He's only watched them once after the birth—right after their child, his child was born.

Tarrlok and Korra stood in place, scared she'd pass away in her sleep. Korra would press her nose to her child's belly to inhale the clean scent of powder. A happy family. Nothing he'll possess, whether it's glass or prison bars or a shroud that separates them.

His eyes soften. When the Avatar gasped and her kneeling form crumpled underneath him, her bending lost forever, it didn't fill him with the same contentment as his fantasies had before.

* * *

One of the funniest sights Amon has seen in awhile is his second-in-command reluctantly holding the girl's hand. His own wife was murdered when she was a few months along.

Amon grants his brother and the Avatar time with Arja, who can barely walk upright or speak coherently. He teaches her. His daughter asks where her "babby" is, and so Amon takes her to his brother, now given a heavily guarded home with his wife.

Arja refers to her uncle as Father and her father as Uncle. As if she won't be confused enough when the time comes.

* * *

_"Good evening, citizens of Republic City. My fair people."_ Static for an instant.

_"As you know, my name is Arja, and I've been quite a presence in these radio transmissions. In fact, I've been a strong influence in the Equalist movement. I've stood behind the Sato family as they produce new technological wonders; I've stood beside our great leader and savior: Amon. As his protege. But as all great dynasties mourn the passing of their emperors, as we mourn the passing of the fruitful seasons, this month we shall mourn the loss of a true revolutionary. Amon has passed in his sleep, and it is I who found him in his deteriorating state._

_"He spoke to me—words beyond my ken, honestly."_ She pauses to laugh. _"Words of the spirits and justice. I have been chosen by the same hand of fate as him to carry through with his work, to cleanse the newborns of any possible taint they may have. To secure our contiued freedom under an equal hand. I know his death will stay with us through time immemorial; it's impact is undeniable. But know that I will head the Equalist government now, and our people will persevere like we always have through our hardships._

_"Thank you for tuning in, and may peace be with you always!"_ The message ends with a click, followed by a new jingle for Flameo Instant Noodles.

* * *

The living arrangement for her parents—well, her mother and Uncle Tarrlok-called-Father—is almost liberating. They are under surveillance, but they can freely roam the premises. It's a two-story house with a large gate and a winding fence. Korra often sits in the garden, planning and waiting.

She gets a guest this afternoon. Arja is stunning in black and red, dressed crisply in a man's suit. She's flanked by two chi-blockers.

"Mother," she says bubbly. She hurries by and hugs Korra, kissing her on the cheek. Korra does not return the affection.

Arja pulls aways and beams. "I gather this is still not to your liking?"

Korra peers darkly at her daughter.

"Mommy, did you hear? I'm taking his place. I get to really help out with things around here. We can expand our operations, create a utopia!"

"You won't free us?" Korra states.

"What's there to free? You have shelter, food, whatever you need." Arja stretches out her arms in emphasis. "I've been good to you. Do you doubt that I love you? Soon you'll see how wonderful the world is now."

"Not if I can't go outside. I will stop you," Korra says. "I'm the Avatar, no matter what. Give me a chance."

"Ha, when you put it that way, I don't think that's a prudent idea," Arja jokes, her smile not matching the look in her eyes.

"You don't have to be him," her mother says earnestly, reaching out to her daughter.

Arja's hands curl at her sides. "Nonbenders in every nation will be able to walk freely—"

"And how many people will you chain up on the process?" Korra snaps.

"You and Father have been succoured by good fortune," Arja replies, "but you're good people. I love you both, and one day you will see. Yes, you will see. Is Father inside? Oh, I hope he doesn't start throwing things this time around. It's rather unbecoming. He must be beside himself in grief."

Once, when Korra was dejected to the point of tears, Arja came by and gently told her to get in the bath. When Korra did so, Arja took her mother's hair and brushed it, combing the loose strands out with her gloved fingers. She dried it and braided it like Noatak did with her as a child.

In the night, Arja reminisces. Her lieutenant is getting old, and soon he'll leave her as well. There are only so many blows he can take. He became more than a subordinate over the years, held her hair back when she couldn't hold food down after Amon died.

She kicks her legs back in her office, stifles her sobs with humming. An old Water Tribe melody. It's one of the few vestiges of her heritage that Noatak showered her with when she missed her parents and it all became too much to bear.

Arja then sings weakly. A Fire Nation song for soldiers at war. When she gets to the part about tiny shells drifting in the foam, she loses all remaining coherence and weeps into her hands. Someone else's lost cries echo her pitiful noises, sounds stifled by duty and time.


	15. Secrets

"_I'm from the Northern Water Tribe."_

"_Really?" the Avatar says uncertainly._

"_Is that so hard to believe?"_

_She blushes and laughs, her hands on her knees and squeezing the fabric of her trousers idly. "Oh, sorry. I don't mean to assume, but, er, you're really, um. Yeah, um."_

"_Well," he says with a broad, forced grin, "I've never been one for keeping secrets. My mother was from the Northern Water Tribe, but my father wasn't. It seems that I resemble him more year after year."_

* * *

He listens. He _listens_ to her.

"Please, he's just some smug ol' windbag. Like he'd really go up against the Avatar."

"I would not underestimate him. Men like Tarrlok, they always grow more dangerous when their resources dwindle. They grow desperate."

"_Is he older?"_

"_Pema, ha, no. What would make you think that?"_

* * *

She's flying. Toward him, toward his escaping Equalists as they are elevated out of the arena. A furious hotness slashes through his veins.

He told her to be careful. She never listens. No matter the instructions, the wisdom, the importance, she's the same insolent brat who trotted into the city with her head high and her fists ready.

Focusing on the water she's rising up with, he pictures it crashing. It's not his intention to kill her, and he almost has a begrudging admiration toward her ignorance. What must the world be like through her eyes? Simple, not a daily struggle to look into the mirror and apply lie after lie to survive.

"_It just makes me feel so stupid." She sniffs, rubbing her cheek with the back of her hand. "I always mess everything up. Everybody, everybody wants me to be like Aang. But I can't be."_

The Avatar plunges as her waterbending is disrupted. If she screams, he cannot hear it over the roaring in his ears.

"_Naga—whoa, easy girl." Sometimes she brings her beast of a pet to the park, and the polar bear-dog is not receptive toward his attempts at amicability._

He warned her, Amon tells himself. It's not like he didn't attempt to give her a fair chance.

"_Just because I'm young doesn't mean I can't amount to anything, but all of the Avatars before me were so-great."_

"_True," Amon replies as they sit together in the park, a tree filtering out most of the sunlight that dwells upon their backs, "but you shouldn't be so self-effacing."_

Seconds after she falls, heat flares around him, but with his mask and years of enforced restraint, he mimics nonchalance. Whether it is his followers or the Avatar, he knows how to look as if he feels nothing.

He isn't certain if his times with her were a fallen barrier or yet another identity. It doesn't matter though. It meant nothing. It won't change a thing.

It never will.


	16. Lessons

"Daddy, Daddy!"

"Stop!"

"I moved her! Wasn't that cool, Daddy?"

"What were you thinking? You could've killed him!" Arja doesn't even bother to say that Tian is a girl. Tears welling in her eyes, she suddenly grows angry.

"No, I didn't!"

"Tarrlok," Korra says, "calm down!"

* * *

"You're not a bad father." Korra pats his shoulder awkwardly. Tarrlok sits on the living room couch with his head in his hands. Sighing, he rubs his face before tiredly sitting up.

"I don't understand." It's a full moon, a night when Tarrlok mostly studied paperwork until Korra nudged him in the arm. He went to check on his daughter.

* * *

Arja mostly keeps to herself, but after her parents let her keep the dog, she plays with it. The dog is ornery; it takes chunks of time to comb the mats out of her hair. She leaves less-than-fragrant presents on expensive things. And Arja loves her.

She wonders how Naga (or "Na-Na," as she used to call her when she was just some dumb baby) would like the small dog. Arja calls the tiny dog with big eyes Tian because her fur is as white as the clouds in the sky. Well, it's raining now, but that's not the point. Republic City is bombarded by severe storms in the night around springtime, at about eight o'clock.

* * *

He tells Korra that he can bloodbend. He tells her everything.

Korra is a strong bender, but she has no genetic predilection to being able to bloodbend. Her parents are a warrior and a healer.

He searches for an answer in desperation. Tarrlok is surrounded, trapped by fate no matter what. He knows next to nothing about the oddball of a gentleman Korra describes as being her past lover.

"She's just a child," Korra says. "It's a full moon. Weird stuff happens."

Distraught, Tarrlok says, "I just can't understand. Why? She doesn't have a drop of my blood in her."


End file.
